U of Texas, Austin film prof John Pierson, who wrote Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes, used the anti-Michael Moore docu Manufacturing Dissent to teach his film students. They were disillusioned about Moore after seeing the film, he writes in an open letter to Moore in Indiewire.

I saw Manufacturing Dissent before I did the first interview with Moore, published during Cannes. There are some embarrassing revelations in the docu, which shows all too clearly that Moore doesn't mind bending the truth to make his point. He's a little like Orson Welles in Touch of Evil; he'll use any means to get his man.

Clearly, though, Moore has matured. When I saw Sicko I forgave him his past trespasses. He is on the side of the angels on this one. The man cares about these causes (even if he drives the folks who have to work with him crazy).

UPDATE: Moore is laughing all the way to the bank with Sicko.

ABC film critic Joel Siegel has died at age 63 of colon cancer, which he had been fighting for six years. I got to know Siegel two years ago on the Red Carpet at the Academy Awards when he, Leonard Maltin and I dished about the Oscar race for the Road to the Oscars preshow. The three of us had a blast as we hung out and rehearsed and then went live on Oscar night. He was very kind to me. Damn.

Dana Harris has chosen a winner in her Best Food Movies contest at The Knife. She has also posted a bunch of cool food trailers. Here are my top ten food movies:

1. Cousin, Cousine
2. Babette's Feast
3. Tampopo
4. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
5. Tom Jones
6. Ratatouille
7. Bread and Chocolate
8. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
9. Waitress
10. Big Night

Your votes?

UPDATE: I forgot Like Water for Chocolate and Chocolat and Mostly Martha— a remake, No Reservations, starring Aaron Eckhart and Catherine Zeta-Jones, is coming up soon. Here's Carrie Rickey's riff on food movies.

I saw Hairspray last weekend and I don't disagree with the main points in Variety's review, although I clearly enjoyed the performances by John Travolta, Christopher Walken and Michele Pfeiffer more than this reviewer did. (That said, Travolta does not hit this out of the park the way you want him to, given who he is. His performance is restrained, muted, somehow.) Truth is, no one has ever played Edna Turnblad better than Divine did in the John Waters original. Ben Stiller's dad, Jerry, who played Wilbur, cameos in the 2007 version.

While New Line Cinema is nervous about opening this 60s period movie musical on July 20 against the summer onslaught, it should be effective counterprogramming because it is a total crowd-pleaser. It's the kind of movie that puts a smile on your face and leaves it there. And most important, after such duds as The Producers, Rent, and Phantom of the Opera, it should prove that the movie musical is alive and well. It works!

I will always have a fond spot in my heart for John Waters, not only because he's cool, funny, and a really nice man, but because when I worked for Film Comment back in New York, David Chute did such a brilliant job on his Waters profile that I fell in love with the writer who eventually became Nora's father. I never would have left NYC otherwise. Waters came to our wedding, and gave Nora the sweetest white knitted sweater when she was born. And I always look forward to the beginning of the holiday season, which is marked by his tasteless Christmas cards.

Today is the Day for "Sicko" June 29, 2007

Friends,

This is it! Two years in the making! The day that our new film, "Sicko," arrives in theaters all across North America! Click here to see where the nearest one is to you.

After you go, let me know what you think. Oh, and send us a photo or a video from your cell phone to show us what it looked like at your theater. We'd love to post a photo from each of the 440 movie theaters showing "Sicko."

To read more about the movie, you can go to MichaelMoore.com.

Here's what this morning's review in the L.A. Times said: "It's likely his most important, most impressive, and most provocative film." Okay, what do they know? I prefer to trust the assessment of E! Television Online: " 'Sicko' - the best movie ever? Maybe." Maybe? MAYBE?! When will they ever give me a break?

It's been a weirdly funny week. First Larry King bumped me for Paris Hilton. Then today, when CNBC invited me to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for an interview, the stock exchange said I was barred from the building. On top of that, Tony Blair is gone, Cheney says he's no longer answerable to anyone's elected government, and I simply don't want an iPhone. Just another week in America.

Hope you enjoy the movie!

Yours,
Michael Moore

Check out MoveOn.Org's Sicko promo email on the jump:

Luke Y. Thompson

A.J. Schnack

David Lowery

Doug Cummings at Film Journey.

Spout previews the Con, coming up at the end of July in San Diego. We'll be blogging from there. Although anyone making up their mind now to go--good luck finding a room nearby.

I had fun moderating the blogging panel poolside at the W. From right, Sasha Stone of Awards Daily, Kate Coe of Fishbowl LA, Jeff Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere and I all agreed that we are obsessed; speed is of the essence, although, Stone said, one can always throw something up fast and tweak it later.

Stone is a stay-at-home blogger with kids who started Oscarwatch out of her own passion for tracking the Oscars. Now it's a year-round thing with big traffic. She sells ads and has helpers. No one tells her what to do, although the Academy forced her to give up her name. She feels strongly, as do I, that she should stay away from putting promo spin on the blog. So she avoids the PR machine. She wants to remain objective, although she certainly makes clear her own rooting interests, especially close to Oscar night. She scours the news and posts from an Oscar perspective.

Coe is a sharp-witted industry pro who produces for TV. Mediabistro, the journalists' website, pays her by the post to blog, which she happily does, obsessively. (We met through our mutual blogging mentor, the late great Cathy Seipp.) Coe's a local media watcher, like sober-minded Kevin Roderick of LA Observed, her main competition. But she's willing to admit that posts leading off with "Britney Spears" do grab traffic.

Wells has been in and out of entertainment print journalism in NY (where I met him in the late 70s) and LA, and moved over to the online side some years ago, as a paid columnist for several sites, including Kevin Smith's moviepoopshoot.com. Wells started his own site, finally, figured out that the blogging format attracts more readers, and sells ads, especially during Oscar season. He's making a living and averages about 10,000 hits a day. He's built a real community of lively commenters. Wells admits that he can get up in the morning, go to the computer and look up at 3 wondering where the day went. I too described a cone of silence that falls when I really get into the blog zone.

Stone and I agreed that the entertainment blogosphere has gotten over-saturated; you can go from blog to blog reading all the same stuff. That's why, while I understand the need for speed, just throwing stuff up isn't always enough. Sometimes I wait for inspiration to hit, for several things to relate to one another, for a juicy angle that will distinguish my take from all the others.

Wells described his main rival, Movie City News' David Poland, as bossy and self-righteous, someone who likes to tell other people how things should be done. Last night Poland told me he would neither share a panel with Wells, nor even read his blog, because Wells has burned him so many times. As if we didn't know, their relationship has turned rancorous. The LAFF cut us off just as the fur started to fly, because they were losing the light.

Here's the report from Indiewire; Awards Daily; fishbowl la; and Hollywood Elsewhere. UPDATE: Here's Craig Kennedy.

John Anderson went to the LAFF screening I missed and reviewed the fest's most-buzzed about documentary: Young @ Heart. Working Title has already picked up the movie rights to this story of swinging singing seniors.

This trailer for David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises looks scary, romantic, sexy, thrilling. That's what they're selling. I'll be curious to see what Cronenberg fills in between the lines.

Imagine my pal Jane's discomfort when she bought organic blueberries at her local farmer's market—and found a picture of a rat on the plastic container.

"It's Disney Garden produce, to promote Ratatouille," I said.

"It's a rat!" she replied. She hasn't seen the movie yet.

Brad Bird and Pixar make the movie's lead-rat chef cuddly, pink-nosed and adorable. He even washes his hands before he prepares his gourmet food. Pixar animators devoted years of study with San Francisco's top chefs as they prepped the movie. UPDATE: Here's a NYT video of Bird talking about how he made the movie.

NYT tech columnist David Pogue creates a video preview of his first intro to Apple's much-anticipated iPhone. I still want one! The biggest negative: like many companies, my office doesn't support them. Variety's strictly-PC universe issues what I used to consider very posh BlackBerries. Check this out.

Transformers took over Westwood last night, playing on multiple screens with crowds jamming Broxton Avenue will-call tables and an after-party on the street.

Transformers looks really expensive. The ILM and Digital Domain effects are extraordinarily complex, with countless huge robots changing forms like rippling rubics' cubes. Some are bad guys (Megatron!), some are good guys (Optimus Prime!), and for some reason they choose to travel as shiny trucks and cars rather than fly. My fave Transformer is Bumblebee, who initially befriends our hero (well-played by Shia LaBeouf) in the form of a yellow Camaro (his first car), and I actually choked up when Bumblebee suffers in the line of battle.

Bay said he enjoyed working every day with the animators, recording voices, making changes, fixing this and enhancing that. They did great work here. Undeniably, Bay has a great eye: there are some amazing action sequences and shots, including some cool real-life locations, exterior and interior, at the Hoover Dam.

Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura said it became a macho game for the filmmakers to prove that they could shoot a movie on this scale in L.A. for less than $150 million. DreamWorks' Stacey Snider insisted that the movie cost less than $150 million. Producer Don Murphy quoted $147 million. Bay grabbed my arm and bet me $2000 that it cost less than $150 million. "Make that $5000!" he said.

"They only went a little bit over," said one Paramount executive. The studio certainly scrimped on the party menu: they served July 4th finger food, Burger King burgers and fries, and ice cream.

Transformers works because Bay channeling Spielberg is a good thing. Some of the touches that one might ascribe to Spielberg were actually Bay's, including a moment when a little girl (who looks like Drew Barrymore in E.T.), sees a Transformer in her back yard and asks him if he's the tooth fairy.

The script is charming and comedic and the first 2/3 of the movie is great fun. I am not the target audience for this, so the climactic battles wore me out. The sheer pixel-packed scale of these relentless images tires the eyes. Transformers will score big with men: manly soldiers fight well for the side, the president is incompetent, the Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight) is ineffectual; as always, John Turturro makes an entertaining villain; and the two femme leads are silly, sexy babes.

Was Bay trying to drive women away? The way I hear it, his wishes carried the day: this is how he sees women. "They look like they're about to display their thongs," commented Nora. She loved the movie, and adores LaBeouf. We didn't spot him in the crowd, but we did see Superman star Bryan Routh, looking slim and unbuff. Nora wanted to know why so many reality stars were invited. I didn't recognize any of them.

Paramount distribution chief Jim Tharpe and marketing head Gerry Rich looked remarkably relaxed, mainly because they're spending a fortune to open Transformers, and its six-day holiday weekend launch makes it harder to measure against other openings. As a non-sequel, it's not expected to be a record-breaker anyway.

Safe to say Transformers is not The Island. One nugget I gleaned last night: Michael Bay is such a big name in Korea that The Island did great business there.

I finally have a Harry Potter screening invite. Here's an early review from the London Times out of the Tokyo premiere:

The film itself is a solid, occasionally spectacular, wizarding romp which struggles unsuccessfully to give us the thrills and fun we have not already had in previous instalments. It is far crueler than its predecessors and begins to introduce properly the idea that we are no longer in an amusing magical playground, but are en route to an epic confrontation with real victims.

UPDATE: Here's Variety's review. Stephen Schaefer saw the film in London.

Joe Wright's film version of Ian McEwan's Atonement, starring his swan-necked Pride and Prejudice gal, Keira Knightley, will debut at the Venice Fest.

Reminding us of the cyclical nature of the film biz, Atonement is one of four Focus Features Oscar-chasers this award season. (Focus had a relatively quiet 2006.) The others are Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and Terry George's Reservation Road. The New Yorker review of Evening suggests that, as I suspected, only actress Vanessa Redgrave will survive as an Evening Oscar contender. Meryl Streep doesn't have enough screen time, as marvelous as she is--possibly Clare Danes. Unless the movie collapses.

This year's fall season is intensely dense--about 24 pics a month will open. Which films will cut through that clutter? Fests Telluride, Venice, Toronto, and New York will act as early filters. The announcement that Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited, for example will open New York on September 28 is a big boost for that Fox Searchlight movie. (The Coens No Country for Old Men will likely not only play NY and Toronto but Telluride as well.) An opening night slot precludes the film from playing other fests. Other NYFF opening nighters that went on to Oscar contention include About Schmidt, Mystic River, Good Night, and Good Luck and The Queen.

Adding a picture to the late-year race is a calculated risk at this point. See Tim Gray's Oscar story.

GreenCine Daily's David Hudson, who is based in Berlin, explains what is really going on with the German government vs. Tom Cruise. According to this story, Cruise isn't banned from filming Valkyrie in Germany after all.

As the movie business slowly moves away from the outmoded inflated big-studio model, momentum is starting to shift to the stand-alone indies that are in a position to deliver to the studios high-quality mid-range commercial pictures for a price. Of course that's easier said than done. And many folks are having the same idea at the same time. So will ex-Miramax and Warner Indie Pictures exec Mark Gill and partner Neil Sacker, ex of the Bob Yari Group as well as Miramax, be able to pull off their new financing and production co. The Film Department, which they've raised $200 million to launch?

I'm betting they have a good shot--alongside Michael London's Groundswell, Tom Rosenberg's Lakeshore, Joe Drake's Mandate and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. Yes, there's a glut of projects out there. But CEO Gill insists that they have the expertise to make six films a year between $10 and 35 million that will rise above the bottomfeeders. "Yes, there are plenty of films that are unreleasable," he says. "There are never enough movies that are good. Our films will eventually have to play on 1000 to 1500 screens."

He doesn't have to worry about competing with distributors for acquisitions pickings. The Film Dept. is going to make the pictures everybody is hungry to buy--and unlike Groundswell, they boast a foreign sales operation. That key executive will be announced shortly.

Now that they have real bucks to play with, Gill and prexy and COO Sacker, who will function as full partners, will start nailing down some attractive film packages that lack financing. "We don't need a distributor before we get started," Gill points out. They're aiming to hire about 38 employees.

As far as aiming for the Oscar market, which they learned well at Miramax, Gill figures in the end about half of their films will wind up boasting Oscar potential. For his part, Sacker doesn't plan to put out pure artistic exercises aimed at the Academy crowd. He prefers the Crash model, he said, which is a "commercial and artistic entertainment."

John Sayles' new movie Honeydripper features a blues band; Emerging Pictures is releasing the pic late this year. Here's a clip of the film's house band, The Honeydripper All-Star Band, starring actor/musician Gary Clark Jr., performing at the River-to-River Festival in lower Manhattan. The band is touring blues fests this summer:

UPDATE: Honeydripper will make its debut at TIFF.

The LAT's multi-talented John Horn whipped out a video camera to shoot Michael Moore as he attended his Skid Row premiere of Sicko in downtown L.A.

Variety's David Cohen wrote a terrific piece last month on the pressures facing VFX movies and the houses that make them possible. FX Guide interviews him on the toll blockbusters are taking on VFX.

Here's the release on today's Humanitas Prize winners:

The 33rd HUMANITAS Prize winners are: Feature Film Category ($25,000) - *tie

FREEDOM WRITERS Screenplay by: Richard LaGravenese (Paramount Pictures)
The story of inner-city kids raised on drive-by shootings and hard-core gang violence and the teacher who gives them a voice. Cited "for its fervent belief that one person can change the lives of our most important asset: our children."

VENUS Written by: Hanif Kureishi (Miramax Films)
When Ian's sullen and cheeky grandniece shows up, Maurice is captivated by her youth and her dour charm and shows her around London, making him aware of his loneliness and old age. Cited "for its insistence on human dignity and emotional honesty when faced with the painful humiliations and deprivations that can come with aging."

90 Minute Category ($25,000)

LONGFORD Written by: Peter Morgan (HBO Films)
Based on the life of a British Lord, Frank Pakenham, the 7th Earl of Longford, and his friendship with child killer Myra Hindley. Cited "for its passionate belief that everyone deserves forgiveness -- as much for them as for ourselves."

So far, it looks like the following films are set for the Toronto International Film Fest in September:

Opener September 6: Jeremy Podeswa's Fugitive Pieces
Roger Spottiswoode's Rwandan drama Shake Hands with the Devil
The Coens' No Country for Old Men (Cannes)
Hou Hsiao-hsien The Flight of the Red Balloon (Cannes)
Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Cannes Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
The closer for September 15 is still to come.

While I was going toe-to-toe with Harvey Weinstein at Cannes, it seems, Fortune's Tim Arango was dancing the two-step with him as well. The Fortune piece closed before the good boxoffice opening for 1408, and the previews of Sicko, which look impressive.

We covered a lot of the same ground. But Arango's recent reporting has unearthed the discovery that The Weinstein Co. board of directors is exercising more oversight and may insist on the appointment of what board member Tarak Ben Ammar calls "a CEO" to oversee the company; naturally the Weinsteins are in full spin control, as this Page Six item shows:

HARVEY Weinstein admitted yesterday, "We were idiots" for combining two movies into the 31/2-hour "Grindhouse," which bombed at the box office. But he was ebullient over the $20 million weekend take of "1408," his horror flick starring John Cusack, and sold-out previews of "Sicko." Weinstein was in full spin control after a Fortune article quoted Tarak Ben Ammar, a Weinstein Co. board member, as saying, "This fiscal year has been a disappointing one." Ammar told us from his yacht in the Mediterranean, "I'm less disappointed than Harvey is himself." Weinstein said he's still making higher profits than the major studios: "It's only disappointing compared to our track record."

Perhaps the Weinsteins may have less control over their board than they'd like to think.

TMZ's Harvey Levin has become as powerful in Hollywood as Walter Winchell, writes the NYT. The Mel Gibson DUI rant alerted me to TMZ, which is the future of online journalism. I wrote a story on Levin, who has a strong relationship with L.A. County Sheriff Lee Bacca, last year:

Harvey Levin COMPANY: Managing editor, TMZ.com WHY: A year ago, Levin figured out that if he posted well-reported breaking celebrity news stories on the Internet, many eyeballs would come -- and so would burgeoning ad revenue.

BACK STORY: "I'm a mut," says the veteran creator/executive producer of Telepictures Prods.' syndicated TV show "Celebrity Justice," which lasted four seasons. "I'm a TV guy, I'm not going to the Internet," he said when he was first approached to start a Web site. But then Levin recalled his frustration on "Celebrity Justice" when they'd be forced to break news on their Web site that they couldn't break on the TV show. "People never thought the Internet could ever be a competitive news source," he says. But just as Levin was about to sign a deal with another network, it struck him that he could make a Web site into "a real functioning news organization," he says, "not (like) Slate (.com). More about breaking news and enterprise stories." He eventually pitched the idea for TMZ.com as the first co-venture between Warner Bros.-owned Telepictures and AOL. "I was banking on AOL's ability to drive traffic and Telepictures' ability to produce and supply video."

TMZ's huge breakout story in July put the site on the map: Mel Gibson's arrest in Malibu on a DUI charge -- and subsequent anti-Semitic rant. A tip to a staff production assistant about his arrest led to the Gibson story -- and Levin's call to the County Sheriff's office. "We broke it at 8:36 p.m. on a Friday evening. We didn't have to wait until we put a TV show to bed or until the newspaper was published or another 24 hours on the news cycle. When we get it right, we get it up. It's about getting things out instantly. At 8:36, the world got it -- it's not about who's watching TV right now. It's hard for others to compete with that. They don't have that kind of agility."

INNOVATIVE APPROACH: TMZ.com, which has a staff of 25 editors, reporters and fact-checkers in Los Angeles and New York, is all about being first with breaking show business stories and "digging up things, going to the courts, getting video angles on stories and creating a vibrant news site."

LEADING EDGE: The radical idea behind TMZ.com was to monetize its chief asset. Instead of being an adjunct to another news organization, the Web site itself makes money by breaking news, says Levin, whose staff fact-checks each story on the Zone before it goes up online. "Accuracy is a big deal for us. If we're wrong, there's legal exposure. We're so careful, we haven't been sued. We don't have time periods. When you start breaking stories, they can't ignore you. Everyone picks up our stuff. A good story is a good story. And there are plenty of stories out there. "

THE ROAD AHEAD: As broadband video technology evolves, so, too, will TMZ.com, which has been adding blogs like City of Industry, which often breaks film-industry news before the trades do, and a vastly improved embedded flash video player. Next up: programming for mobile phones.

Fact is, Germany doesn't tolerate Scientology. German society despises the religion, and journalists have gone after Tom Cruise in the past. Now the German Defense Ministry won't permit UA's "Valkyrie", a WW II thriller starring Kenneth Branagh, to shoot on military bases there, reports Variety:

Decision was based on Germany's longstanding contention that Scientology is not a religion but an exploitative, profit-based business concern.

It's not the first time Cruise has butted heads with the German government. In 1996, German politicians called for a boycott of "Mission: Impossible" and other Cruise films (the first in the franchise earned $24.2 million in Germany; volumes two and three brought in $27.7 million and $10.4 million. respectively). In 2004, the star was told that he could not film scenes for "Mission: Impossible III" in Berlin's historic Reichstag, a site strictly off-limits for any lensing, though Scientology was apparently not part of the equation.

Cruise met with U.S. Ambassador to Germany Dan Coats in 2002 in an attempt to get German officials to soften their views on the Church of Scientology, which has been officially monitored there since 1997.

Anderson Jones died Thursday night of a heart attack at LA's A Mighty Heart premiere. He was 38.

I first met Andy during an audition for a cable movie review show hosted by Chris Gore. The ones we taped included Jones and KROQ movie maven Ralph Garman. Jones was a big, joyous, flamboyant, funny, charming, and fearless presence, fast on his feet. And he loved movies. He was better than all of us. It made sense to me that he was an online pioneer who thrived at TNT's Rough Cut and then E! Online, and loved opining about the Oscars on the live E! Oscar pre-show.

An ill-fated holiday trip to Mexico three years ago, when losing his laptop and ID delayed his return to work, ended his stint at E. After that, he seemed unmoored. Career disappointment and bad luck dogged him. He freelanced for Emmy Magazine, The Advocate and Lavender. He stayed with each of his separated parents. I'd see him at screenings and parties leaning on a cane after his ankle was shattered when he was hit by a car as a pedestrian.

I've known too many people in the entertainment business who have died young. There's a pattern. Sometimes when people don't find their niche, can't do what they want to do, or don't consider themselves successful, their disappointment and depression render them too unhappy to thrive.

More from Spout and Hollywood Elsewhere.

I filled out the AFI Top 100 ballot. And I realized that I was being a total auteurist. I'd check anything by Keaton, Welles, Hawks, Ford, Huston, Wilder. Other directors--even the great Hitchcock, whose classics are dating fast-- were hit or miss. I realized that some movies had slipped in my estimation over the ten years since I last filled out the same list.

But one director had come up in my estimation considerably, which surprised me: Capra. His oeuvre is holding up really well. Is it the political tenor of the times? My liberal bias against the establishment? Capra rocks. When I took Nora to a double feature of It Happened One Night and Holiday, the Capra was fresh as a daisy; the Philip Barry/George Cukor was still terrific--and would make a great remake--but it was very much a product of its time. (On the other hand The Philadelphia Story, with many of the same collaborators, is still perfect.) Movies are supposed to be snapshots of a moment. But the great ones last, become timeless, universal.

Here are some other reactions to the AFI List.

Glenn Kenny has an alternative list.

Here's Time's Top 100.

Here's Edward Copeland's Top 100. And Bad for Glass.

The Media Center has a list of 100 films all directed by women.

And the 27-member Alliance of Women Film Journalists finally announced their top 100, a few days later than they should have to catch the crest of the AFI wave.

Sasha Stone (formerly of Oscarwatch, now called Awards Daily) noticed that Vertigo has actually risen on the new AFI list, while I think that the long-lauded Hitchcock classic is suffering as time goes by. Rear Window isn't as strong as I remember it either. North by Northwest is holding up better, as is Psycho. And Carrie Rickey applauds the rise of John Ford's The Searchers.

Spout's Karina Longworth rounds up some AFI reactions and has some of her own.

My own Top 100 is on the jump--in no particular order, btw, I just numbered the list to make sure I picked 100. OK, tell me what horrible omissions I've made! I decided not to have more than two films by any one director. Also, this list includes foreign films, which the AFI does not. Given a choice among films by my favorite directors, I have purposely not picked more obscure titles because I'm submitting the list to an alternative critics' poll. (So I substituted My Darling Clementine for Rio Grande, and Some Like It Hot for Ace in the Hole.) Any movies that earn just one vote won't make the cut. So it makes more sense to pick a better-known film from a director, or two.

I'll let you know when that list goes up.

Pixar's Ed Catmull and John Lasseter have won their battle with Disney over made for DVD animated sequels. Having seen Brad Bird's extraordinary Ratatouille over the weekend, it makes sense that Disney would let these guys have their way. What a record: they've produced one original winner after the other. Much detail, hard work, skill and talent went into the painstakingly-crafted Ratatouille--and it still plays like a delicious light-as-air crepe suzette. I'm still reveling in all that yummy French food.

Richard Corliss writes up Pixar and Ratatouille in Time.

MovieCityNews' David Poland has lunch with Michael Giacchino, the composer of Ratatouille.

So far, Rescue Dawn is on my top ten list for this year. Filmmaker Werner Herzog, who is always a smart and entertaining interview--see Patrick Goldstein's delightful Sunday LAT profile--adapted his own 1997 documentary Little Dieter Learns to Fly, which in some ways was lighter on its feet than this harrowing feature about two American fighter pilots shot down behind enemy lines in Laos during the Vietnam War. With unnerving skill, Herzog shoots this brutal prison camp survival tale with doc-like authenticity, and captures the hallucinatory beauty of the jungle. His skeletal leads, Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, go all the way too.

Like A Mighty Heart, which had a weak opening, Rescue Dawn is so painful to watch that I suspect that the MGM release will not be a commercial breakout after it opens July 4. But small summer films sometimes make DVD/Oscar comebacks; the mighty PR firm 42 West is behind this one. Paramount Vantage will stage a late-year Oscar onslaught for A Mighty Heart star Angelina Jolie as well. Movies like these are all about DVD sales anyway.

The picture LAT writer John Horn paints of the War of the Roses divorce battle between ICM agent Risa Shapiro and Saw producer Oren Koules is not pretty. It reveals that the richer you are, the messier it gets. She wants a piece of his Saw sequels. He wants a piece of her ICM clients going forward. Ouch. They've settled, but not before Horn got hold of plenty of juicy details.

This does look like the cast photo for a tacky TV show circa The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (I met someone over lunch who admitted to being an obsessive collector; back in the day I named two kittens Ilya and Napoleon. I digress.) But the players on this one are promising. They all know how to do tongue in cheek. And I have hopes for Jon Favreau.

Hat Tip: Cinema Fusion.

In honor of the release of 1408, Criticker, a website with smart recommendation software for amateur movie critics, looked at its members' rankings of Stephen King movies and came up with a Top Ten list: so far 1408 comes in at number four:

1408 opens in wide release this weekend. The film, starring John Cusack, is based on Stephen King's short story from Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales and, according to the critics, is the best King adaptation in years.

How does it stack up (so far) at Criticker? Not many users have seen it yet, so this list might change, but here are the top 10 Stephen King adaptations, based on average tier at Criticker:
1. The Shawshank Redemption - Avg Tier 8.73
2. The Shining - Avg Tier 7.84
3. Stand By Me - Avg Tier 7.55
4. 1408 - Avg Tier 7.33
5. The Green Mile - Avg Tier 6.99
6. Misery - Avg Tier 6.73
7. The Dead Zone - Avg Tier 6.46
8. Carrie - Avg Tier 6.14
9. Storm of the Century - Avg Tier 5.57
10. The Stand - Avg Tier 5.57

I'd put The Shining, Carrie, Stand By Me and Misery ahead of Shawshank. And I'd put The Dead Zone and The Stand ahead of The Green Mile. I never saw Storm of the Century.

Criticker also ranked new movies in theaters:

Of all the new films in theaters, we were able to generate 9 PSIs (Probable Score Indicators) for you, based on your top 30% of Movie Critics. Here they are, in order of your PSI: 1. Ocean's Thirteen - 95 2. Mighty Heart, A - 74 3. 1408 - 65 4. Surf's Up - 60 5. Gracie - 54 6. Nancy Drew - 44 7. Mr. Brooks - 40 8. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - 34 9. Evan Almighty - 26

OK, they're using my Criticker votes to peg me as a relatively discerning smart adult (presumably), which thus skews the films accordingly. Hey, I didn't hate Evan Almighty that much! But I did go to see the top two films on the list—and none of the others.—except for Evan Almighty. Which suggests they've got me wrong. And I do plan to see 1408.

As the internet continues to be a cluttered jumble of noise, movie theaters and critics are going to stick around for a while.

Why newspaper writers should learn to write for the web.

The myth of the dying newspaper.

Is it my imagination? Or are there a lot of promising movies coming up? It's easy in the summer to feel optimistic about the long list of pictures heading for fall festival slots and year-end awards consideration. Most of these films will be filtered out of the mix through festival hazing and actual boxoffice and critical performance. Some of the films, like Revolutionary Road, may come out next year.

For starters, here's my preliminary awards-contender list:

Best Picture:
American Gangster (Uni)
Atonement (Focus)
Beowulf (Par)
The Brave One (Warner)
Charlie Wilson's War (Uni)
Darjeeling Limited (Fox Searchlight)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax)
Eastern Promises (Focus)
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Uni)
In the Valley of Elah (WIP)
The Kite Runner (Dwks/Par Vantage)
Love in the Time of Cholera (New Line)
Lions for Lambs (MGM)
Lust, Caution (Focus)
Margot at the Wedding (Par Vantage)
Michael Clayton (Warner)
No Country for Old Men (Miramax/Par Vantage)
Pride and Glory (Par) 2008
Rendition (New Line)
Reservation Road (Focus)
Revolutionary Road (Dwks/Par)
The Savages (Searchlight)
Sweeney Todd (Dwks/Par)
There Will Be Blood (Par Vantage)
Zodiac (Par)

Best Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
Wes Anderson (Darjeeling Limited)
Noah Baumbach (Margot at the Wedding)
Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men)
David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises)
Marc Forster (The Kite Runner)
Paul Haggis (In the Valley of Elah)
Gavin Hood (Rendition)
Neil Jordan (The Brave One)
Ang Lee (Lust, Caution)
Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road)
Mike Newell (Love in the Time of Cholera)
Mike Nichols (Charlie Wilson's War)
Robert Redford (Lions for Lambs)
Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Ridley Scott (American Gangster)
Joe Wright (Atonement)
Bob Zemeckis (Beowulf)

Best Actor:
Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Christian Bale (Rescue Dawn)
Javier Bardem (Love in the Time of Cholera)
George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
Russell Crowe (American Gangster)
Tom Cruise (Lions for Lambs)
John Cusack (Grace is Gone)
Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road)
Colin Farrell (Pride and GloryCassandra's Dream)
Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson's War)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages)
Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah, No Country for Old Men)
Daniel Day Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Viggo Mortenson (Eastern Promises)
Edward Norton (Pride and Glory) 2008
Joaquin Phoenix (Reservation Road)
Benicio del Toro (Things We Lost in the Fire)
Denzel Washington (American Gangster)

Best Actress
Halle Berry (Things We Lost in the Fire)
Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
Julie Christie (Away from Her)
Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose)
Jodie Foster (The Brave One)
Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart)
Nicole Kidman (Margot at the Wedding)
Keira Knightley (Atonement)
Jennifer Jason Leigh (Margot at the Wedding)
Laura Linney (The Savages)
Vanessa Redgrave (Evening)
Charlize Theron (In the Valley of Elah)
Naomi Watts (Eastern Promises)
Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road)
Reese Witherspoon (Rendition)

Best Supporting Actor:
Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
Philip Bosco (The Savages)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War)
Clive Owen (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
Mark Ruffalo (Reservation Road, Zodiac)
Steve Zahn (Rescue Dawn)

Best Supporting Actress:
Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeney Todd)
Clare Danes (Evening)
Julia Roberts (Charlie Wilson's War)
Susan Sarandon (In the Valley of Elah)
Meryl Streep (Lions for Lambs)
Charlize Theron (In the Valley of Elah)
Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement)

The Indy 4 website posted this cool photo of Harrison Ford on the set as Indiana Jones, taken by his director, Steven Spielberg.

The LA Film Fest opened last night in Westwood Village, where the fest has conquered L.A.'s sprawl by focusing its screenings and events there. With more sponsorship and editorial attention from the LAT, the fest is cooking.

Thursday night's opening film was the hugely entertaining period biopic Talk to Me, starring Don Cheadle as loudmouth streetsmart Petey Green, an ex-con deejay in 60s and 70s Washington D.C., and suave suit Chiwetel Ejiofor as his boss/manager. Kasi Lemmons directed and the score is soulful, although it lacks the Motown sound it might have had because Berry Gordy, who Green memorably disses in the movie, took offense! Taraji P. Henson (Hustle & Flow, Reign Over Me) gives a breakout performance. Focus Features is pushing the movie hard in cities around the country; it opens July 13.

Of the films on the program I've seen, I recommend 2 Days in Paris, Julie Delpy's charming love letter to Paris. She takes fish-out-of-water boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) to meet her (real) parents, among other things. The movie isn't perfect (she isn't Richard Linklater) but she learned a lot from her two films with the director. In Steve Buscemi's Interview, Buscemi and Sienna Miller go toe-to-toe in a duel between bitter aging journalist and gorgeous wily actress. See who wins. Rocket Science is a funny, authentic, and poignant look at high school. Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound) is the real deal.

Other fest programs I want to check out are:

The Sundance hit Joshua, Danny Boyle's Sunshine and Larry Fessenden's environmental horror story The Last Winter. David Gordon Green is one of the producers of Great World of Sound, which looks good. In the doc competition, Gael Garcia Bernal narrates Saint Death, a look at Mexico's Death cult. Working Title picked up narrative rights to Young @ Heart, the doc about seniors making music, which is building some buzz.

Of the international selection, I'll try to see German director Dorris Dorie's How to Cook Your Life, France's comedic biopic Moliere, Johnny To's Exiled, Patrice Leconte's My Best Friend, the Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which won the Cannes Palme d'Or, and Eric Rohmer's 2004 Triple Agent, which was never distributed here.

For any VFX wonk, the ILM-sponsored talks with FX wizards Dennis Muren and Scott Farrar are musts to attend.

[LAFF photos of Kasi Lemmons and Don Cheadle, and Taraji P. Henson and Leslie David Baker, by Wireimage]

Hanging out with critic John Anderson in Seattle, he reminded me that when young actress Marisa Tomei won her supporting actress Oscar in 1993 for the raucous comedy My Cousin Vinny, she beat four other amazing performances:

Joan Plowright for Enchanted April
Vanessa Redgrave for Howards End
Judy Davis for Husbands and Wives
Miranda Richardson for Damage

Thus it was a shocker when Tomei was announced. People still speculate about whether presenter Jack Palance read the right name that night.

Michael Moore leaves no stone unturned in his Sicko quest. Fresh from his forays to Capitol Hill and Sacramento, Moore appeals directly to his loyal fanbase via email to see his movie:

'SiCKO' Sneaks Across America This Saturday!

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

Friends,

Would you like to go to a sneak preview of my new film, "Sicko," before it opens on June 29th? Well, if you live anywhere near the 32 cities listed below, this Saturday night, June 23rd, our movie studio is going to hold sneak screenings of "Sicko" in 43 theaters across the country. I'd love for you to be one of the first to see it so, if you'd like, you can click here and order tickets now. We'd love to see you there.

Also, if you live in the New York City area we are opening the film tomorrow (Friday, June 22) exclusively at one theater, the AMC Lincoln Square for a first week run. The interest in the film is very high and theaters have been asking us to open it as soon as possible. Alright, already! It opens tomorrow in NYC, the sneak previews are Saturday around the country, and we open nationwide next Friday, the 29th.

Last night we screened "Sicko" for the members of Congress and the Senate in Washington, D.C. Earlier in the day we testified during a briefing in Congress called by the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, Jr. I brought with me some of the people who appear in the film to tell their stories -- and it was a powerful moment.

I will write again next week, before "Sicko" opens nationwide on the 29th. I'm so excited, after spending the last couple of years working on this film, that you all will finally be able to see it.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com.

P.S. Catch the sneak preview of "Sicko" in these cities this Saturday night, June 23rd:

As his 1408 goes into release, Stephen King defends torture porn in the LAT:

I go to see the films because I like them, I like to be scared anyway. And I think you have a tendency to see things come in waves. If one thing is successful others follow in its wake. And the thing is, "Hostel 2" is actually a better picture in every way. It's very clever and Eli Roth is a tremendous talent, and has a tremendous eye as a director. The material makes a lot of people uneasy, it makes me uneasy.

There's another side of that too. The gore obscures, particularly in the minds of critics, some of the reasons why those movies are successful. The gore in movies like "Last House on The Left" was so new that it kind of slapped audiences in the face, "I can't believe I saw that, let's go see it again!' Like driving past an accident. But people get desensitized to that in a hurry and you cease to get involved on a level where there are characters. It's like watching people in a shooting gallery being knocked over one by one. You can't go for gore for the sake of gore in movies anymore.

The always fascinating writer Laura Albert, who invented the alter ego JT LeRoy with the help of Savannah Knoop, appeared in a Manhattan courtroom to defend her fictional creation, reports The Washington Post:

LeRoy was supposedly a real-life former boy prostitute who had grown up sexually abused and turned tricks in a West Virginia parking lot. "Sarah," a novel under his name said to be "60 percent true," earned him underground cult figuredom and celebrity endorsements from the likes of Winona Ryder and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, not to mention raves from serious publications. As LeRoy gained fame, Albert asked a friend to portray the 20ish writer to make public appearances, and a handful of reporters ultimately profiled a trembling JT -- he was apparently traumatized and exceptionally shy -- in dark sunglasses and a wig. The little fella unspooled a riveting story.

It was all made up. Albert, it turned out, had never set foot in West Virginia, as she testified Wednesday. She was raised in Brooklyn and later moved to San Francisco, which is where Jeremiah "Terminator" LeRoy was born.

New York director Noah Baumbach's follow-up to The Squid and the Whale is clearly another intense but funny family drama, this time starring Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh as two sisters. I have not yet seen the movie, but according to someone who has, Kidman takes on a tough, not always sympathetic role as a successful writer who is attending the wedding of her free-spirited younger sister. Leigh (who is married to Baumbach) digs into the juiciest role she's had in a while. And Jack Black plays her forbearing fiance. Paramount Vantage will release the Scott Rudin production in the fall--film fest dates are likely.

What do you think?

(This trailer is now premiering on AOL Movies.)

George Clooney was raised to be a good Liberal by his father Nick, he tells the LAT.

And Newsweek profiles A Mighty Heart star Angelina Jolie, who also pursues Good Works.

Producer Lynda Obst has always been a top-notch writer and she waxes eloquent at New York Magazine about the declining status of women in Hollywood today:

It’s true that the women still in charge are among the best and most entrenched studio heads the town has seen for decades. No one wants to do anything about Amy Pascal or Stacey Snider but raid them. Beloved by their bosses, each trailing scores of hits—made for every gender—thank God for them, they make the very idea of a long-term future possible for many women still struggling in the trenches. There are terrific women running studio indies and ferociously talented female execs on the rise at major studios as well, many smart enough to have had husbands and babies on the way.

But this is the other big thing: It’s a Darwinian grind, and there is a huge dose of attrition killing the most normal of these women, as a superhuman kind of desire is necessary to deal with the hours, the lying, the incredible and increasing difficulty of putting a movie together—mixed with the apparently singularly difficult proposition of having both a life (and even sex) along with a big career. So the frequent bonding conversation among some of the best of the singles is that in the “glamour capital of the world,” they’re getting the short end of the stick.

It's a fun piece that hangs on the Carla Gugino agent character in Entourage, who also made me feel good and bad at the same time. But are things in Hollywood really that bad? I don't think that the fact that a number of women have left their power posts really means anything. Thanks to DreamWorks' Stacey Snider, Nina Jacobson will be able to produce better movies than the ones she was stuck making at Disney in its current family friendly guise. Gail Berman turned out to be more comfortable with TV than movies and that's where she will be productive going forward. Snider herself gave up running a major studio (which I do have mixed feelings about), but she is able to contribute more quality movies in her position at DreamWorks, which is only a good thing.

The other problem that Obst addresses is the way that movies have gone literally to the dogs, to the dumb male side of things. That's all too true. But it has nothing to do with how many women are running things. More women will rise to power positions again, because they're good, and can play the game with the best of the men. Always.

[Illustration for New York by Christopher Sleboda]

Carlos Cuaron has started shooting Rudo y Cursi, the first project of the Mexican directors group Cha Cha Cha, which reunites Mexican heartthrobs Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. I'm there! I'll never forget the collective swivel of heads when the two actors walked through the room at the Indie Spirit Awards the year of Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien.

[Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron: Francesco Proietti/Associated Press]

Asian Cinemaphile David Chute assembles some classic Bollywood music clips.

This gives you a picture of what movie stars go through when they promote their movies abroad. In this case Johnny Depp goes on a Japanese TV show to promote Pirates of the Caribbean and has no idea what's in store:

Hat Tip: USA Today's pop candy blog.

It's been a long time since pop culture has shared a national watershed moment like the finale of HBO's The Sopranos. People are still deconstructing that episode. Hillary Clinton's people have wasted no time in concocting a viral video that is sure to travel far and wide. But do they know that the current wisdom holds that the blackout ending was the moment of Tony Soprano's death?

Details are starting to emerge about some of the cool gadgets in Chris Nolan's new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, set to debut in July 2008.

The NYT's Michael Cieply does a nice job on Peter Berg's The Kingdom. My column on The Kingdom ran online Thursday night and in Sunday's Weekly Variety. Claudia Eller focused on A Mighty Heart in her Friday piece in the LAT.

One way to deal with the crazy piracy of Michael Moore's rabble-rousing healthcare docu Sicko, which has been widely available for download on the internet, is to bend to audience demand and open the movie earlier than its planned June 29 release. Thus Lionsgate and The Weinstein Co. will open the movie on one screen a week early in Manhattan.